Scrummy banana bread recipe

This fabulous banana bread recipe is slightly adapted from a recipe in Nigella Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess. The only reason I’ve adapted it is because I don’t like raisins or walnuts, so I’ve omitted them from the recipe and added a splash of brandy in place of Nigella’s recommended rum-soaked raisins. I make this recipe all the time – it’s perfect for using up over-ripe bananas and it makes a scrummy breakfast with a cup of coffee.

Ingredients
175g plain flour
2 teaspoons of baking powder (not too heaped, or it’ll erupt over the side – I use measuring spoons to get the right quantity)
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (as above)
125g unsalted butter, melted
150g caster sugar
A pinch of salt
2 large eggs
3 large, very ripe bananas
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
A splash of brandy or similar (Amaretto works well too)

Step 1
Preheat the oven to 170 degrees and grease your trusty loaf tin. I use a loaf tin liner as it’s much easier; this doesn’t need greasing and you can simply lift the cake straight from the tin. Melt the butter. At this stage I like to weigh out all the dry ingredients so that they’re ready for later.

Step 2
Mix the melted butter with the sugar and beat together well.

Step 3
Beat in the eggs, one at a time. I’m using these cute little eggs laid by my parents’ chickens.

Step 4
Mash the bananas, or blend them, and mix those in. I like to blend rather than mash the bananas, as I find it produces a smoother, lighter texture in the finished cake.

Step 5
Stir in the vanilla essence and add a splash of brandy. If you don’t have anything suitable, it’s fine without.

Step 6
Stir in the flour, salt, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda a little bit at a time, until smooth. The recipe says to add the dry ingredients a third at a time, but I find that this has a tendency to produce little lumps of flour in the finished cake. Instead, I use a sieve and add tiny amounts of flour at a time, stirring all the while. It takes longer, but it mixes the flour in much more reliably.

Step 7

Turn the mixture out into the loaf tin and bake for about an hour to an hour and a quarter. When it’s done, a skewer will come out more or less clean.

When it’s done, it’ll look all golden on top, like this:

It can be eaten warm from the oven, perhaps with some custard, and it’ll keep for a few days. We tend to have it for breakfast, but it’s great any time of day. Enjoy!